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I've always thought ideas like these to be cool exercises, but ultimately so naive. It seems there are so many underlying assumptions on what intelligence look

I've always thought ideas like these to be cool exercises, but ultimately so naive. It seems there are so many underlying assumptions on what intelligence looks like for this to make any sense. E.g. why do we assume another intelligent being would necessarily follow a linear, sequential conversation? or that the conversation would happen in the same time-scale we are used to as humans? or that an extraterrestrial being would care about conversation at all, instead of exchanging information via other means, like direct chemical reactions, genetics, or apparent random noise, and expecting us to pick all the implicit signals? I bet we wouldn't be able to recognise certain life forms if they literally appeared before us, because we have such strong biases of what "life" looks like - we can't even reach consensus over viruses being life forms, despite being gene-based, following natural selection, etc. Let alone "intelligent life forms" or anything else that a virtually infinite universe could throw at us. PS: Maybe my notion of "extraterrestrial" has been deeply influenced by H. P. Lovecraft. :D

naringas 6y ago
> why do we assume another intelligent being would necessarily follow a linear, sequential conversation? it's also cool to ask why do we? (...follow linear, sequential conversations?)
- projektfu 6y ago
  Yes, there is likely a genetic basis to human language structure, and to expect it to be intelligible by aliens is a big assumption. Very little of our science fiction deals with intelligent but bizarre aliens.
andrewflnr 6y ago
I think it's quite probable that even if some entity or group finds linear sequences of symbols unnatural, if they're smart enough to pick it up they're also smart enough to piece together the meaning the hard way, the same way we would if presented with something very foreign. Any technological entity has encountered and mastered lots of foreign systems, including us. Biochemistry, quantum mechanics, heck, even classical mechanics don't come to humans naturally, but we're getting by pretty well anyway. As for recognizing life, eh, I don't think it's an accident that we're carbon-based blobs of relatively flexible, mobile matter. If there was a more likely template, that's probably what we would be based on instead.
- mFixman 6y ago
  Our definition of "intelligence" is overfit for humanity. There's no reason why an alien civilization have any interest in linear sequences. The way I see it, any communication system that doesn't make it possible to communicate with starfish won't make it possible to communicate with aliens either.
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    Well, radio communication is serial (and even television signal is encoded as a linear sequence). Looks like serial protocols are the most natural, simple, and reliable of all. And do not forget about the natural numbers!
    - giantrobot 6y ago
      Lots of natural phenomena are "serial" just due to entropy. Radioactive decay, friction, even pulsars are going to tell intelligent species that things happen sequentially in the time domain.
canjobear 6y ago
It would be surprising if all extraterrestrial civilizations were uninterested in linear, sequential communication. All we need for Lincos to work is for some of them to get it.
giantrobot 6y ago
We don't need to worry about completely unintelligible (to us) Lovecraftian aliens. If they exist and are even interested in looking for alien life themselves they'll have equally unintelligible (to us) methods and motives. Life on Earth is varied but has a couple common characteristics. It's not coincidence Earth life is carbon based. Carbon is pretty common, a lot of organic chemistry involves similarly common elements but also offers the complexity to build some really specialized molecules. It's more probable than not that carbon based life is one of if not the most common chemistries. Water is also pretty important for life on Earth. This is also not a coincidence as water is a very interesting molecule. It's a mild solvent so it enables a lot of chemistry to occur. It's composed of plentiful elements and is found throughout the universe. Other molecules have similar properties but most are more complex and aren't quite as versatile as water. We are concerned with alien life that is at least somewhat like our own. We're interested in species (should they exist) that recognize the utility of radio any optical astronomy. Cthulhu may not give a shit about radio astronomy but that doesn't matter. The universe is filled with radio emissions, any intelligent species that discovers electrical theory will end up being able to detect it. Natural radio emitting phenomena tend to be temporally cyclic. So even if a particular species doesn't think "linearly", lots of phenomena are linear in the time domain. Their radio astronomers might find it weird but they'll know linear events exist and have a way to express them. So radio is a pretty good medium to send messages. Messages encoded in the level of math needed to understand electrical theory well enough to build radio telescopes will likely be intelligible by those telescope builders. The same "linear" understanding species would need to understand pulsars or radioactive decay will let them understand linear intelligent signals. Interstellar communication is likely to only be one-way but there's some common denominators that logically fall out of the effort. They won't work for every kind of species that could exist but you don't need to target every possibility, just a reasonable subset.
- szemet 6y ago
  > Water is ... a mild solvent I remember, when I was a child I asked my parents (both are chemists), about what the most powerful solvent is. To my suprise they answered: water. Wow, that can be true, it is everywhere, I tought... It is somewhat a point of view question, considering that there are different categories of solvents - it is like asking a biologist about the most dangerous animal: human - of course! But that can't be true, humans are everywhere and I'm still alive. These kind of suprises happens if you do not specify the questions exactly (Dangerous to what and how? Solving exactly what kind of things?) edit: it is natural to think, that something is mild and friedly (in general) - if you are made of that...
jgwil2 6y ago
It seems to me there are at least some assumptions we can safely make about communication if there's any possibility of communication at all: the bit as the basic unit of information, sequential ordering, counting, etc. If aliens don't have this in common with us then there's probably no hope at all that we could recognize each other, let alone communicate.

naringas 6y ago

> why do we assume another intelligent being would necessarily follow a linear, sequential conversation? it's also cool to ask why do we? (...follow linear, sequential conversations?)

projektfu 6y ago
Yes, there is likely a genetic basis to human language structure, and to expect it to be intelligible by aliens is a big assumption. Very little of our science fiction deals with intelligent but bizarre aliens.

andrewflnr 6y ago

I think it's quite probable that even if some entity or group finds linear sequences of symbols unnatural, if they're smart enough to pick it up they're also smart enough to piece together the meaning the hard way, the same way we would if presented with something very foreign. Any technological entity has encountered and mastered lots of foreign systems, including us. Biochemistry, quantum mechanics, heck, even classical mechanics don't come to humans naturally, but we're getting by pretty well anyway. As for recognizing life, eh, I don't think it's an accident that we're carbon-based blobs of relatively flexible, mobile matter. If there was a more likely template, that's probably what we would be based on instead.

mFixman 6y ago
Our definition of "intelligence" is overfit for humanity. There's no reason why an alien civilization have any interest in linear sequences. The way I see it, any communication system that doesn't make it possible to communicate with starfish won't make it possible to communicate with aliens either.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Well, radio communication is serial (and even television signal is encoded as a linear sequence). Looks like serial protocols are the most natural, simple, and reliable of all. And do not forget about the natural numbers!
  - giantrobot 6y ago
    Lots of natural phenomena are "serial" just due to entropy. Radioactive decay, friction, even pulsars are going to tell intelligent species that things happen sequentially in the time domain.

canjobear 6y ago

It would be surprising if all extraterrestrial civilizations were uninterested in linear, sequential communication. All we need for Lincos to work is for some of them to get it.

giantrobot 6y ago

We don't need to worry about completely unintelligible (to us) Lovecraftian aliens. If they exist and are even interested in looking for alien life themselves they'll have equally unintelligible (to us) methods and motives. Life on Earth is varied but has a couple common characteristics. It's not coincidence Earth life is carbon based. Carbon is pretty common, a lot of organic chemistry involves similarly common elements but also offers the complexity to build some really specialized molecules. It's more probable than not that carbon based life is one of if not the most common chemistries. Water is also pretty important for life on Earth. This is also not a coincidence as water is a very interesting molecule. It's a mild solvent so it enables a lot of chemistry to occur. It's composed of plentiful elements and is found throughout the universe. Other molecules have similar properties but most are more complex and aren't quite as versatile as water. We are concerned with alien life that is at least somewhat like our own. We're interested in species (should they exist) that recognize the utility of radio any optical astronomy. Cthulhu may not give a shit about radio astronomy but that doesn't matter. The universe is filled with radio emissions, any intelligent species that discovers electrical theory will end up being able to detect it. Natural radio emitting phenomena tend to be temporally cyclic. So even if a particular species doesn't think "linearly", lots of phenomena are linear in the time domain. Their radio astronomers might find it weird but they'll know linear events exist and have a way to express them. So radio is a pretty good medium to send messages. Messages encoded in the level of math needed to understand electrical theory well enough to build radio telescopes will likely be intelligible by those telescope builders. The same "linear" understanding species would need to understand pulsars or radioactive decay will let them understand linear intelligent signals. Interstellar communication is likely to only be one-way but there's some common denominators that logically fall out of the effort. They won't work for every kind of species that could exist but you don't need to target every possibility, just a reasonable subset.

szemet 6y ago
> Water is ... a mild solvent I remember, when I was a child I asked my parents (both are chemists), about what the most powerful solvent is. To my suprise they answered: water. Wow, that can be true, it is everywhere, I tought... It is somewhat a point of view question, considering that there are different categories of solvents - it is like asking a biologist about the most dangerous animal: human - of course! But that can't be true, humans are everywhere and I'm still alive. These kind of suprises happens if you do not specify the questions exactly (Dangerous to what and how? Solving exactly what kind of things?) edit: it is natural to think, that something is mild and friedly (in general) - if you are made of that...

jgwil2 6y ago

It seems to me there are at least some assumptions we can safely make about communication if there's any possibility of communication at all: the bit as the basic unit of information, sequential ordering, counting, etc. If aliens don't have this in common with us then there's probably no hope at all that we could recognize each other, let alone communicate.